


Quieter Moments

by deathwailart



Series: Rhiannon Amell [7]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Companions, F/M, Tea, quiet moments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 06:36:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tea in the Warden's camp and the legacy it has in Vigil's Keep.  See end notes for links to the tea each character favours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quieter Moments

It's something of a miracle that there is one thing they can all agree on that isn't Alistair's cooking skills or lack thereof or that Darkspawn are the most abhorrent things on all of Thedas but none dwell on it too closely when it turns out that there is a love of tea amongst the camp. Perhaps it's more to do with sitting down and inhaling something warm and good or memories of curling up somewhere with a cup of it but whatever it is, they all have their favourites, all have their own way of making it and it coaxes Morrigan to join them at night by the fire. They don't have tea together every night - it's too busy, they're too tired or harassed with the situation or one another, cooking, setting up, cleaning themselves and possessions because night isn't about sleeping really, it's about being prepared for the day to follow once it's too dark and dangerous to travel further. Some nights though they find themselves sitting together and someone will fetch water and ask what it'll be tonight, the nights when any tensions between members of the party are set to one side with a simple ritual common to elf and dwarf, Qunari, human, ex-templar, apostate, assassin, bard and warrior.  
  
As with all of this, it starts with the Warden. Tea was something of a tradition (verified by Wynne) at the Circle, the classic image of a scholar working by candlelight in a library surrounded by books with a steaming mug off to one side, well out of the way of errant elbows. Rhiannon always likes to add just a dash of elfroot, bitterness offset by a liberal drizzling of honey - they all need a little healing and it's better than elfroot soup that Morrigan swears by whenever something decides it would quite like to chew on them. As the First Enchanter's favourite - a position and title loved and loathed in equal measure - she was privy to some of the nicer things that the world had to offer. Most of all though, she grew to love a certain blend of tea made from flowers that grew in warmer climes that they sometimes obtained dry for potions but she had never thought it to be used for tea. Fruit and spice, a definite tang and she can almost see herself after leaving Irving's office to study, inhaling her tea and then a book almost able to forget about the Templars for a moment. It doesn't quite offer the same escape it once did but when she finds it in a market she pulls it out at camp and shares it with them, offering stories of her life before. And thus the tradition is born.  
  
Wynne favours black tea but with a little twist, familiar bergamot notes but with a twist; sweet, floral lavender for relaxation and a hint of cream even though she never adds any. She first produces it when she notices Alistair and Rhiannon having trouble sleeping through the night (and later she says it's a good thing she can gather ingredients so easily when Rhiannon and Zevran keep them awake all night) and she just seems to know in the innate way healers always do when they all need a little help dropping off to sleep at night. A mentor introduced her to it when she was but a girl newly arrived to the Circle, alone and terrified and once she learned how to truly be a teacher herself she always shared a cup with students. Once she tells a story of one young mage, a spirit healer who loved cats (Rhiannon always looks down and away, she knows this story, knows it to the same conclusion as Wynne) who was never calmed by such a tea but that it at least gave him moments of peace, took the edge off his anger to change the rant of the angry young to an eloquence that she hopes leads somewhere fruitful. (Much later Rhiannon will try to revive the tradition in Amaranthine but she doesn't have a healer's touch, she has a soldier's touch, someone who has seen too much but has to see more and then he'll slip through her fingers for the better part of a decade.)  
  
Oghren being from Orzammar as he is doesn't really have a favourite tea as such but like dwarven ale there's an approximation that Oghren claims will put hairs on the chest with a pointed look at the little pike-twirler who looks away trying not to blush. Oghren claims that this tea is really a huge secret of the drinkers who get rid of their hangovers or prepare for a new session of being drunk with a big greasy breakfast (because apparently that's a skill by the _stone_ how do surfacers not know of it) and that if they so choose they can add some alcohol to it. Only Oghren doesn't but none of them say anything about it; there are times when something is too personal, too raw or that it requires just the right moment for an explanation after a carefully phrased question. It's a good tea to start the day though, the citrus hints a surprise but it smells jammy and spicy at once and it's a strong taste - malt and really none of them should have been surprised about _that_ when Oghren would probably declare fermenting himself to be a good way to go. (Like Wynne's tea it becomes part of life at Vigil's Keep in the mornings whether they're off out hunting Darkspawn and Maker knows what else or eating communally in the hall together.)  
  
In Orlais art is everywhere and tea is no exception, ostentatious bouquets and blends - Leliana once said she was sure that they had been drinking perfume, only in tiny amounts of course but still - and it is something Leliana has always loved. So sophisticated, sitting in some beautiful tearoom with coloured blinds and drapes to cast the room in a soft light, conversation flowing all around her and oh such _darling_ tea cups and saucers and spoons and so on and so forth. Leliana learned it from Marjolaine as a bard must learn how to effortlessly fit in with all walks of life. Bloom teas are supposed to come from Orlais or that is how it goes and at times she believes the story but she thinks that perhaps magic had to be involved - how else could a tea suddenly unfold into a delicate and beautiful flower. It is a tea better enjoyed indoors with some sort of sweet confection dusted lightly with powdered sugar in a glass cup to better enjoy watching the flower unfurl but at camp, leaning close enough to truly inhale the jasmine, it chases away the Blight for a moment, allowing her to feel as though she is the bard in fancy shoes and dresses once more. (After they part ways she sends a box to the Warden, different blends with notes on perfumed paper; Rhiannon keeps these to herself, inhales them and writes brief letters back when she can but no gifts. Unless the genlock toe counted. Judging from the letter she received after she sent it, she sincerely doubts it.)  
  
Tea was not so much an art form for the Qunari as it was in Orlais but it was a tradition all the same. The first cup shared was between Sten and the Warden when they took watch together late in the night until the sky showed hints of pink and after that he offered it up for the group. He tells them of where it is from originally, of the farmers who grew it and in doing so offers a little of a culture vastly foreign to theirs that he usually only divulges to the Warden when she asks him what he finds strange about her home leading to questions about his home. Amber in colour with a taste none of them can actually manage to describe (but the Warden catches Sten smiling over the rim of his cup when they try and fail to pinpoint that one taste) something in it. Mineral almost but that seems a poor comparison when they're basing it on the water in caves they've had to drink that dripped down rock walls. (When she goes to Par Vollen with him for some peace before the inevitable return to a position as Warden-Commander he takes her to where it is grown, shows her it being made and she takes some home with her in a beautifully carved box, a tea for special occasions. It isn't the kind of tea you have a biscuit with but she always has one - with chocolate chips - in honour of him when she indulges.)  
  
Twas Flemeth who taught Morrigan so many things with herbs being included in her studies; Morrigan knows far more about cooking but considering Flemeth's unique 'teaching' style then that may have been her intent, to make sure her daughter knew all there was to know and could damn well do it herself. Flemeth does not brew tea; she brews almost everything else but Morrigan's forays into the towns and villages revealed more than shiny trinkets and baffling displays of breaking personal boundaries or ignoring them entirely. She asked Flemeth of tea and her mother's eyes had grown very far away as they did when she spoke of legends that Morrigan heard and asked of, of beauty that brought her nothing but grief and pain, men with and without honour, a women wanted as thing only. Whilst not a traditional sort of tea (for bartering for it proved difficult) she found enough in the Wilds and indeed on the whole of their journey to make it (after making a gesture of taking the first sip to prove to a certain simple fool that it was not poisoned.) Berries gathered from the forest with care and their leaves too, an earthy sort of musk beneath it all, never too sweet or too tart; Morrigan confides to the Warden later that Flemeth held her tea in disdain and in her own sort of way, reveals her delight in the fact that her companions enjoyed it so. (This is the one blend Rhiannon never manages to get hold of again, try as she might through gathering berries and adjusting quantities with as much care as she would when brewing a potion. She misses everything about Morrigan tremendously in the end because she was there from almost the very beginning and life feels a little less vivid without her, like some measure of magic has been lost to the world.)  
  
It took Alistair quite a long time to know about tea despite growing up in Redcliffe but then again he was almost a stray there, never fitting in, never exactly wanted so he was left to his own devices until Isolde finally got Eamon to do as she wished. He didn't fit in any better at the Chantry. He got the verses of the Chant muddled up, he had an odd sense of humour and he resented it; the Revered Mother was a shrew, he didn't know how to talk to girls let alone pious novitiates and there was that whole mess of being a noble bastard where both groups shunned you because you held the awkward middle ground. It was one of the Templars - the one who put him forward for training and perhaps Mage hunter had never been a titled he'd wanted even then, he'd been good at fighting, he'd been able to be his own man then - who first called him over to share the chamomile blend after long days of being looked down on by the nobles and insulted by the common born recruits. He'd told a different story when he'd mentioned that yes, Morrigan, dogs liked tea too but one day he tells Rhiannon because everyone else tells her all their secrets. (As it turns out, her hound doesn't like chamomile tea. He vomits all over Alistair's boots when he shares some with it.)  
  
Ah Antiva where everything has a twist, an undercurrent and where all things have true spice and variety and where even tea is an adventure, Zevran calling this particularly blend something that apparently translates to whore's breakfast (none of them know enough Antivan to refute this claim.) Whatever it is, he teasingly says that it will restore a man's fire (Alistair one day asks if every tea was meant to come with some comment to try to make him blush) and gives a woman the most alluring air. Rhiannon even asks if it's some sort of aphrodisiac which prompts a cackle then a headshake: just the stories the whores told him as a boy when they let him have a sip of the pink liquid. It's exotic, they all agree, almost too sweet at first for those with tragically Fereldan sensibilities but it grows on them all, a riot of flavours that he names (he says it's fate that the same flower in the Warden's tea is found in his) one by one, all sorts of far off fruits and things that don't quite sound as though they belong in tea found there. It's just as tasty cold mixed with a little rum but that's the story for after the Archdemon is vanquished and Alistair is sweating like a sinner in the Chantry as he panics over the wedding night. (And much later there is a rumour that the Warden and the Queen were found by the King and Cauthrien singing bawdy dwarven drinking songs in a cellar with the bastardised tea but of course those are scandalous rumours, nothing more.)

**Author's Note:**

> Characters and their teas:  
> Rhiannon - [hibiscus tea](http://www.adagio.com/flavors/hibiscus.html?SID=258adf11e9c8e053b395f6bfaa71446b)  
> Wynne - [earl grey lavender](http://www.adagio.com/black/earl_grey_lavender.html?SID=c462866e288c6ecf703b08edd3fd3e94)  
> Oghren - [Irish breakfast](http://www.adagio.com/black/irish_breakfast.html?SID=d4654ac01514a28068ff94e2a1767b0d)  
> Leliana - [jasmine bloom](http://www.adagio.com/blooms/jasmine_bloom.html?SID=c48084498e33b23e54bb691fb479d6c0)  
> Sten - [Fujian rain](http://www.adagio.com/oolong/fujian_rain.html?SID=c087c8674ff2f41f654eb1ec938f803e)  
> Morrigan - [forest berries](http://www.adagio.com/flavors/forest_berries.html?SID=258adf11e9c8e053b395f6bfaa71446b)  
> Alistair - [chamomile](http://www.adagio.com/herbal/chamomile.html?sid=258adf11e9c8e053b395f6bfaa71446b)  
> Zevran - [pina colada](http://www.adagio.com/herbal/pina_colada.html?SID=c48084498e33b23e54bb691fb479d6c0)


End file.
